9-11 Anomalies

Anomalies of the September 11th Attack, Its Run-Up, and Response

Accepting the official story of the 9/11/01 attack
requires one to accept a long series of anomalies --
extremely improbable events, amazing coincidences, and contradictions.
This page lists many such anomalies.
The
Top Anomalies
page focuses on the more salient ones.
The anomalies described on this page are organized into the following topics:

Two employees of Odigo, the instant messaging service,
received e-mail warnings of the attack two hours before the
first assault on the WTC.
6Â

Business executives, some of whom worked in the WTC,
were in Nebraska to attend a meeting at Offutt Air Force Base
hosted by billionaire Warren Buffett on the morning of September 11th.
The same base would be
visited later that day by George W. Bush.
7Â

Attorney General Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines
in the summer of 2001.
8Â

Hijacking Scenario

The attack scenario was irrational on the part of the alleged hijackers,
and its execution is incomprehensible in light of their behavior.
There is little or no credible evidence that Arab hijackers were involved
in the September 11th attack, except in the takeover of
Flight 93.

Attack Plan
By flying from remote airports and
going far out of their way,
the attack planners exposed their plan to almost certain ruin,
had the air defense system operated normally.

The originating airport for Flights 11 and 175
was Boston Logan instead of any of several airports near New York City.
This created about 40 minutes of exposure to interception for each flight.

Flight 77
flew to the Midwest before turning around to return to Washington D.C..
It was airborne an hour and 23 minutes
before allegedly attacking the Pentagon.
That would provide ample opportunity for interception
even if the air defense system were mostly disabled.

Flight 93 flew to the Midwest before turning around
to fly toward Washington D.C.
Had it reached the capital, it would have been airborne
for more than an hour and a half.
The odds of escaping interception with that plan
would be infinitesimal under standard operating procedures.

Behavior of Villains
The behavior of the alleged hijackers preceding the attack
is inconsistent with skill and discipline needed to have a hope
of pulling off such an attack.

Mohammed Atta allegedly barely caught Flight 11,
a key flight in the event that he was supposedly planning for years.

World Trade Center Destruction

On 9/11/01 three skyscrapers were totally destroyed,
with structural collapse primarily due to fires given as the explanation.
Fires and bombings have never before or since caused steel-frame
buildings to collapse.

Building 7 experienced total collapse,
allegedly because of fires,
when no steel-frame building before or since has ever collapsed,
totally or even partially, due to fires.
Building 7 was an over-engineered 47-story steel-frame skyscraper,
standing over 350 feet from the nearest of the Twin Towers.
Public evidence documents only small fires in it on September 11th.

Building 7 collapsed in a nearly perfectly vertical fall,
producing only minor damage in the Verizon and Post Office buildings
only 60 feet on either side of it.

Building 7 collapsed into a remarkably small rubble pile
of mostly pulverized remains,
when no steel building falling for any reason has ever pulverized itself.

Building 7 contained a
15-million-dollar emergency command center,
but instead of using it for its ostensible purpose, then-Mayor
Giuliani evacuated his team to a makeshift command center
as soon as the September 11th attack started.
11Â
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The emergency command center was destroyed
along with the rest of the building,
even though it was constructed as a bomb-hardened shelter.

The remains of Building 7 were rapidly removed and the steel recycled,
evidently without any on-site and only extremely limited off-site examination.
The rapid disposal operation proceeded despite the fact
that no one was believed buried in the rubble,
and the tidy rubble pile was not blocking adjacent roads.

Twin Towers
The Twin Towers
exploded into
dust and
shattered steel,
a behavior inconsistent with the known behavior of steel structures
outside of explosive demolition.

The
South Tower
was struck 17 minutes after the
North Tower,
and in a less damaging manner, and it had less severe fires,
yet it collapsed 29 minutes before the North Tower.

The South Tower's core structure was largely undamaged by the
off-centered jet impact,
unlike the North Tower, yet it collapsed sooner.

Both Towers started to disintegrate at regions above and below
the crash zones in the first seconds of their falls.

Both Towers fell straight down,
through themselves,
following the path of maximum resistance,
a behavior never before observed in spontaneous collapses of any type
of vertical structure.

The collapses of both Towers exhibited features never otherwise
seen except in controlled demolitions:
sudden onset accompanied by thunderous bangs,
visible explosions ringing their perimeters,
energetic ejections
of dust
at regular intervals,
and copious production of dust.

Both Towers exploded outward and were shredded and pulverized --
a pattern of destruction much more destructive
than normal controlled demolitions, yet this result was supposedly
produced without the added energy of explosives.

So thorough and consistent was the destruction of the Twin Towers,
that no remains of the distinctive web trusses
are clearly recognizable in
hundreds of photographs of the rubble
in various stages of excavation.

Pentagon Attack

The Pentagon attack
defies expectations that this prime terrorist target would have been defended,
and that a terrorist would have hit the front side in a simple maneuver,
rather than the back side in an extreme precision aerobatic maneuver.

Wide-Open Target
The Pentagon -- the heart of the military establishment
of the world's greatest super-power --
was hit after ample warning without being protected by any defensive action.

The 9:37 strike was well over an hour after the first signs
of a hijacking and 34 minutes after the South Tower strike confirmed
that an attack was underway.

The Pentagon is within 11 miles of Andrews Air Force Base,
which apparently had two combat-ready fighter wings on 9/11/01.

The attack plane was monitored on radar as it approached
the capital.

Unlikely Super-pilot
Alleged Flight 77 pilot
Hani Hanjour
was not up to the task.

The spiral dive approach to the Pentagon was such an extreme maneuver
that experienced air traffic controllers thought it was military jet.
13Â
The tree-top final approach skimmed objects in the yard and crashed
the plane into the first floor of the building.
Experienced pilots have wondered if any human pilot could have
executed the maneuver.

Hani Hanjour was considered incompetent by his flight school instructors,
and was denied rental of a single-engine plane.
14Â

When Flight 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46 AM, the World Trade Center
buildings were at less than half the occupancy of a typical mid-day.

The first Tower to be attacked was hit just 15 stories below the top,
and trapped people mostly between the 95th and 110th floors.

The second Tower to be attacked was hit only 30 stories below the top,
and the plane missed the core, allowing people to evacuate from above
the impact zone.
The 17 minutes that elapsed since the first hit allowed many people
to escape the second Tower while the elevators were still working.

Out to Lunch
Top officials were not available until after the attack was over.

President George W. Bush
remained at the publicized location
of Booker Elementary School until about a half-hour after the
news of the attack went on TV worldwide, first
reading My Pet Goat to second-graders,
and then holding a press conference.

Brigadier General Montague Winfield had
Navy Captain Charles J. Leidig, Jr. -- a rookie -- assume his watch as
Deputy Director for Operations for the National Military Command Center
(NMCC) at 8:30 am on 9/11/01,
and relieved him after the attack was over.
19Â

Government Response

Despite the worst failure in history of the military to protect
American civilians, and the worst alleged engineering failures in history,
there were no consequences for the responsible authorities,
and no honest investigations.

Air Defense Failures
No one was held to account for the numerous unprecedented failures
in air defense.

General Richard Myers, Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
on September 11th,
was confirmed as Chairman on September 13th
in spite of being unable to provide any meaningful answers to
questions regarding the air defense failures.

General Richard Eberhart, commander of NORAD on September 11th,
was promoted to head the newly created NORTHCOM.
20Â

NORAD's press release contradicted early statements by high-ranking
officials that no interceptors had been scrambled on 9/11/01.

NORAD's vague timeline raises far more questions than it answers,
yet officials have never been required to give a full account.

The
9/11 Commission
advanced a new timeline which contradicts NORAD's earlier timeline
and the testimony of military officials to the Commission itself.

Building Collapse Inquiry
The total collapses of WTC 1, 2, and 7 were the three largest engineering
failures in history (based on the official story).
How were they investigated?

FEMA was given the sole authority to investigate the collapses
even though it is not an investigative agency.

The investigative team assembled by FEMA consisted of unpaid volunteers.

The investigators were not provided with the blueprints of the buildings.

FEMA's report states the causes of the collapse
"remain unknown at this time".
(By the time the report was released
the steel had been entirely disposed of.)
The fact that Building 7 (supposedly) failed in a way that contradicts
100 years of engineering experience makes it the largest
and least understood structural failure in history.

The 9/11 Commission Report failed to even mention the
destruction of Building 7.

NIST's
Final Report on the collapse of Building 7
abandons the earlier official claims of severe structural damage
and diesel-fueled fires,
and blames the swift straight-down collapse on
a house-of-cards chain reaction triggered by
a single beam breaking loose from its connections
due to thermal expansion --
a completely novel failure mechanism with no supporting evidence.

NIST
proffered disingenuous arguments
for failing to test for explosive residues,
which it continued to repeat even after responding directly
to public comments and correspondence pointing out
the fallacies of those arguments.

Means, Motive, and Precedent

The preceding list is far from complete.
It does not include consideration of facts
pertaining to the means, motive, and precedent for the crime.
The official account's blaming one organization,
while ignoring others with much more to gain
and possessing tools and access better suited to the commission of the crime,
is arguably a vast anomaly.
This subject is addressed by
911Review.com: